A typical lead-acid battery for a motor vehicle has a plurality of cells of interleaved positive and negative plates received in adjacent separate wells of a case with a sealed cover which together form the housing. The positive and negative plates of adjacent cells are electrically connected together by lead straps which are welded together through a passage in a common wall of the case between the adjacent cells.
A positive lead terminal post is electrically connected to the positive strap of the first cell and a negative lead terminal post is electrically connected to the negative strap of the last cell. Each post projects through the cover and is welded to its associated strap of the same polarity and sealed to the cover.
To mass produce lead-acid batteries, it is well known to transfer a plurality of cases along a conveyor to consecutive workstations to progressively form or assemble the components of the battery. Typically, at each workstation, a tool is raised and lowered relative to the case to assemble or work on the components disposed in the case. After working on one case or workpiece, the tool must be raised so that the case can be moved on its way to the next workstation and a subsequent case may be moved into position under the tool. The tool must then be lowered to perform work on the components in this case and raised again in this continuous cycle. The time needed to raise the tool, remove the case, advance the next case into the workstation and then lower the tool to the case wastes a considerable amount of time and thereby increases the time to assemble the components to make the batteries. Providing additional tools to simultaneously work on the components in more than one case at a time greatly increases the cost of the system and still suffers from this same inefficiency in which the tools must be raised or retracted and the conveyor advanced to remove the case and advance a subsequent case to the tools. Thus, there is a need for a more efficient apparatus and system which increases the productivity of a work tool to increase the number of batteries which may be formed or assembled in a given period of time and to lower the cost to work on or assemble the workpieces.